Snowflake (software)

Snowflake is a software package for assisting others in circumventing internet censorship by relaying data requests. Snowflake proxy nodes are meant to be created by people in countries where Tor and Snowflake are not blocked. People under censorship then use a Snowflake client (packaged with the Tor Browser and Onion Browser) to access the Tor network, using Snowflake relays as proxy servers. Access to the Tor network can in turn give access to other blocked services (like blocked websites). A Snowflake proxy can be created by either installing a browser extension, installing a stand-alone program or browsing a webpage with an embedded Snowflake proxy. The proxy runs after the user has voluntarily enabled it and the browser or program is connected to the internet.

In contrast to regular VPNs and proxy services, creating a Snowflake proxy does not require port forwarding or having a dedicated IP address, with simply installing a browser extension being enough most of the time. The ease and accessibility of creating proxies increases the difficulty of blocking their IP addresses due to the large number of them in existence.

As of 2024, Snowflake proxies are hosted on about 140000 unique IP addresses concurrently. The average number of users that use Snowflake to connect to Tor is 35000 and 29 TB of their traffic is relayed by Snowflake proxies daily.